I hope to see a bit more centre sharpness at the 250 end, and faster focusing when tracking at 250. My only other regular annoyance is having to turn AF off to manually adjust focus; if that is upgraded it will be a great buy.

Optical upgrades?!?! The old 55-250 is already a pretty solid piece of work optically. I can't wait to see how it could improve. I mean, if it gets much better, it would practically eliminate the need to go to an L in that range.

Optical upgrades?!?! The old 55-250 is already a pretty solid piece of work optically. I can't wait to see how it could improve. I mean, if it gets much better, it would practically eliminate the need to go to an L in that range.

Yeah, the L lens is five times as much, but it is in a whole different league optically.

Not really, if you compare them both on an APS-C body then the L lens is just barely better than the 55-250. On the other hand compare the 55-250 vs the 70-200 is ii at 200mm both on crop and you'll see a world of difference.

I'm sure the 55-250 is a nice lens but you can't compare it to an L. The Ls have a (wider) constant aperture and are weathersealed. That alone is reason to buy them. How annoying is using manual exposure with a varying aperture lens? Not good at all.

Yes, but it is an inelegant solution for many of the M use cases. It works great when your M's job is to serve as a backup/second body. But for the reason I believe the M really created, to serve as compact travel system and compete with the NEX et. al., the adapter is sub-optimal. I am glad I got one, though!

I would love the the EOS-M 11-22mm and a nice telephoto zoom, likely 55-250mm or similar. Maybe a 35 or 50 prime and we have a pretty complete system.

Well, I was time limited, so I didn't specify which L. Of course, if you want the speed or fixed aperture of the 70-200's, you can't really compare.

And no, the existing lens isn't quite in the same league optically or even close in build to most L lenses, though it is optically among "the best of the rest". However, if the optics truly are improved (which was the point of my original post), it will make it hard for most casual or even fairly serious crop users to justify kicking up to the 70-300 L.

And no, the existing lens isn't quite in the same league optically or even close in build to most L lenses, though it is optically among "the best of the rest". However, if the optics truly are improved (which was the point of my original post), it will make it hard for most casual or even fairly serious crop users to justify kicking up to the 70-300 L.

When I first got T2i kit with the 18-55, I also bought the 55-250mm 4-5.6 IS lens. It was my first dSLR. I found both lenses to be horrible. I was surprised that Canon would make such bad lenses. The 55-250 is really bad, even my son who is now using the T2i does not want to use it.

If this is really "the best of the rest", then what lenses are worst then the 55-250?

Optical upgrades?!?! The old 55-250 is already a pretty solid piece of work optically. I can't wait to see how it could improve. I mean, if it gets much better, it would practically eliminate the need to go to an L in that range.

Yeah, the L lens is five times as much, but it is in a whole different league optically.

Not really, if you compare them both on an APS-C body then the L lens is just barely better than the 55-250. On the other hand compare the 55-250 vs the 70-200 is ii at 200mm both on crop and you'll see a world of difference.

Wow - I've never done that before, but that seems really odd to me. I don't know why the image quality from the 70-300L should be that different between the FF body and the crop - I have not seen that to be evident in actual use. Something seems wrong there. I seriously doubt the 55-250 would look that much better on a FF body if it were capable of being mounted there.

Wow - I've never done that before, but that seems really odd to me. I don't know why the image quality from the 70-300L should be that different between the FF body and the crop - I have not seen that to be evident in actual use. Something seems wrong there. I seriously doubt the 55-250 would look that much better on a FF body if it were capable of being mounted there.

These Canon APS-C format cameras have a significantly higher pixel resolution than their 35mm format counterparts. So to me it is not strange that the image quality goes down from FF-> APS-C. The effect is similar to putting a 1.4x extender on the lens. For the 55-250 on a 35mm format Canon camera, sure the center sharpness should go up but the edges and corners may be black or otherwise very bad.

Optical upgrades?!?! The old 55-250 is already a pretty solid piece of work optically. I can't wait to see how it could improve. I mean, if it gets much better, it would practically eliminate the need to go to an L in that range.

Yeah, the L lens is five times as much, but it is in a whole different league optically.

Not really, if you compare them both on an APS-C body then the L lens is just barely better than the 55-250. On the other hand compare the 55-250 vs the 70-200 is ii at 200mm both on crop and you'll see a world of difference.

Wow - I've never done that before, but that seems really odd to me. I don't know why the image quality from the 70-300L should be that different between the FF body and the crop - I have not seen that to be evident in actual use. Something seems wrong there. I seriously doubt the 55-250 would look that much better on a FF body if it were capable of being mounted there.

The results of lens resolution tests on The Digital Picture (TDP) have recently been discussed on this forum:

The results can not be compared between different sensor sizes / camera systems (eg FF vs APS-C).FF will generally yield sharper results per pixel than APS-C. Some APS-C bodies can sometimes be an advantage of FF when focal length limited.

Back to the original topic, Canon's 55-250mm lenses are great, but noticeably not as sharp as the 70-300mm L. Yes, I have used both - and I've kept the awesome 70-300mm L.

If there's an improvement for Canon's 55-250mm lens that would be good. Particularly in the AF specs, eg if it would be a STM: awesome! I feel that lens being a non-USM / non-STM lens is its greatest 'weakness'.

Paul

Logged

I appreciate using my Canon DSLRs along with a host of lenses & many accessories to capture quality photos, and share with friends.